Alanna Connors

Sep 25 1956 - Feb 2 2013

Alanna was born on September 25 1956 in Hong Kong and grew up in
Greenwhich, CT. She received her undergraduate physics degree at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1978 and a Doctorate in
Physics and Astronomy at the University of Maryland in 1988. Her
thesis, written based upon research conducted at NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center, was on
Fast X-ray Transients.
She went on to make
significant contributions to the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.
Alanna was also a research scientist at the Space Science Center at
the University of New Hampshire, and a visiting Professor at Wellesley
College. She was a founding member of the international
astrostatistics collaboration CHASC at Harvard University and the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Alanna was a pioneer in the development of principled Bayesian methods
to apply to astrophysical problems. As a longtime advocate of
rigorous data analysis, she introduced many people to the joys of
Bayesian statistics. Her research in X-rays and later gamma-ray
astrophysics required solid statistical methods which were generally
unknown to astronomers in the early nineties. At a time when Bayesian
analysis was out of favor in Statistics, and detailed statistical
analyses were not generally considered in astrophysics, she was
farsighted enough to realize they were both necessary for future
progress, and worked ceaselessly to promulgate these ideas. She
developed a search detection algorithm with Poisson maximum likelihood
for X-ray transients and used it on the HEAO-1 A2 X-ray data in her
first research paper published in Astrophysical Journal in 1986
(ApJ 303, 769),
which became part of her Ph.D. thesis. When she started
working with CGRO Comptel data she also became interested in detection
and characterization of gamma-ray bursts. She was among the first to
recognize the potential of the Bayesian Blocks algorithm; her work
provided early demonstrations of its capabilities for
detecting
gamma-ray bursts and pulsars. Besides being a trailblazer in Bayesian
astrostatistics, Alanna was also among the earliest to see the promise
of Python for data analysis in astronomy, participating as a
co-investigator on one of the earliest NASA-funded projects building
Python statistical software for astronomers.

Alanna was a perennial source of encouragement to students and other
researchers she met at Conferences, and was always available to
discuss algorithms, methodologies, and problems. Her encouragement
and participation were critical to the success of the CHASC
collaboration that was set up between high-energy astronomers and
statisticians at Harvard in the wake of the launch of the Chandra
X-Ray Observatory. That the collaboration has grown to be as
productive as it has owes a great deal to her ability to notice
where astronomical analyses were lacking and where principled analysis
could contribute to correct it. A case in point was her realization
that astronomers were misusing the ubiquitous F-test. This led
directly to one of the most influential papers to come out of the
CHASC collaboration, "Statistics, Handle with Care: Detecting Multiple
Model Components with the Likelihood Ratio Test"
(ApJ 571, 545).

She had a felicity with principled statistical analysis that was the
envy of most people. The mathematics of the Poisson distribution came
easily to her. Indeed, no talk or presentation of hers was complete
without her standing in front of a complicated mathematical expression
and trying to explain that it was actually very simple and
straightforward. She put this expertise to good use in developing
Bayesian image deconvolution methods, first with
EMC2,
and then with
LIRA.
It is due to her efforts that it has become possible to speak
of the significance of a 2D feature. The initial work was described
by in the review published as part of the
Statistical
Challenges in Modern Astronomy conference in 2007. She continued
to refine the method over the past few years, and was working on it
to the very end.

Alanna's most far-reaching and enduring impact may well come from her
tireless outreach efforts, both outreach to colleagues through her
efforts on astrostatistics education, and her outreach to the public.
She organized dozens of workshops and special astrostatistics sessions
at conferences dedicated to highlighting new methodologies and clever
algorithms. But she never lost sight of the purpose of these tools.
She always grounded her work in astronomically relevant cases, as for
instance disentangling the cosmic gamma-ray background from the
galactic, which she used as the primary motivator for LIRA.

She also had an interest in public science education. She taught
astrophysics at Wellesley College, contributed to university physics
instruction at UNH and UMD, contributed to public education in
science through projects at The Christa McAuliffe Planetarium at
Concord NH, participated in family science days at her son's elementary
school, and encouraged exploratory science learning and teaching
through many other avenues. An abiding interest in the history
of physics and astronomy from its ancient origins, in welcoming
women's participation in physics, and celebrating stories of
diverse contributors to science underlay her service on the
American Physical Society Forum for the History of Physics,
and other projects.

Beloved wife of Phillip Alan Veatch, loving mother of Roy Micah
Veatch, Alanna filled all of her life exploring the wonders of the
world and sharing her smile and caring with friends, relatives,
colleagues, and strangers. She died at home in the arms of her family.
Alanna is survived by her mother Sonia Connors of Arlington, MA;
sisters Cynthia Connors of Brooklyn, NY, Kathleen Connors of Hau'ula,
Oahu, HI, Noirin Connors of London, England; and her brother Patrick
Connors of New York, NY.

Prepared by Aneta Siemiginowska, Elizabeth Cavicchi, Tom Loredo, and Vinay Kashyap,
with contributions from family and friends.